I’m in San Francisco for the next few days (along with fellow open source analyst, Jay Lyman) for the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) at The Palace Hotel. The 451 Group is the Industry Analyst Sponsor this year. We’ll have a booth in the exhibit area, as we did last year - please stop by and say hello to our team. We will have some of our recent open source research at the booth. In terms of session participation, I have two panels this year:

Colliding Worlds, Perspectives on the Converging of Open Source and Proprietary Software (Tuesday 2pm). Andrew Aitken from Olliance Group is moderating the panel, and I’ll be one of the panelists, alongside Neil Armstrong from Activision, Tim Golden from Bank of America, Jason Maynard from Credit Suisse, and Mike Olson from Oracle. The primary focus of this panel is the impact of open source on the software industry - how vendors are adapting to open source. With Activision and Bank of America on the panel, I’m sure we’ll hear about the impact to end user organizations, especially technology selection and procurement. This panel topic aligns well with our recent research report “Going Open,” which takes a look at the increased level of activity by existing software vendors in the open source community beyond consumption.

Community Development: Business Development for the 21st Century (Wednesday 2pm). I am moderating this panel. Panelists include Danese Cooper form Intel, Chris DiBona from Google, Andy Dreisch from SugarCRM, and Dawn Foster from Jive Software. Danese and Dawn are writing a book for O’Reilly entitled “The Art of Community.” Chris is actively involved in Google’s Summer of Code initiative (among many other things), and Andy is responsible for SugarCRM’s community initiatives. With a greater focus in recent years placed upon the interactions between software vendors and open source communities, we’ll have a lot to explore in this panel. One area, in particular, is to what extent can proprietary software vendors adopt a community model for building an enhanced customer ‘network’ without necessarily making source code publicly available?

In addition to the two panels, The 451 Group is hosting two special events this year during the conference. On Monday night (05/21/07) from 8-10pm, Dawn Foster from Jive Software has organized a meetup of technology community leaders at The 451 Group office in San Francisco. Dawn has done all the planning work for this event and we’re happy to offer a venue for the gathering. On Tuesday night (05/22/07) from 7-9pm, The 451 Group is hosting the OSBC VIP Reception at The Palace Hotel. If you’re in town and would like to attend, please send me an email. The reception will provide for some great networking opportunities, and we have also lined up a panel that will be timely and engaging for the attendees.

If you’re in town for the event and want to connect - send me an email or give me a call (503.334.1810). Most of my slots are filled up with meetings already, but I’d be happy to arrange something in the mornings or after-hours.